IBM InterConnect: SoftLayer Now Foundation for IBM Cloud

Among the first news out of IBM InterConnect in Singapore is the announcement that IBM (IBM) has successfully integrated SoftLayer into its cloud portfolio so that SoftLayer now acts as the foundation for IBM's cloud services. The company also announced new social and mobile offerings for its more than 100 SaaS offerings.

But the big news is really around the integration of SoftLayer, which IBM acquired in July in an effort to create a new cloud business division. According to Big Blue at the time, the purchase of the privately held company was to bolster its cloud computing to drive a stronger leadership position while speeding up the adoption of both public and private clouds.

Since then, it looks as though IBM and SoftLayer techies have been hard at work—1,600 new customers have joined SoftLayer's existing roster of 21,000 customers. And now SoftLayer going forward will be the foundation for the IBM cloud portfolio.

Basically, that means IBM is shifting its cloud portfolio over to the SoftLayer infrastructure. This is just the first step in this process, as IBM has dozens of cloud services to move over to SoftLayer, but it's a start. One of the first services to make the shift was the IBM Social Learning platform, which IBM also noted is now being commercialized on SoftLayer (expected to be available in December).

IBM is also extending more than 100 of its SaaS offerings to the social and mobile spaces, which could be a nice touch for many of IBM's customers. As part of the announcement, IBM launched the IBM Mobile Feedback App, a cloud-based mobile application that allows human resources professionals and line of business executives to plug into the opinions and ideas of employees quickly.

Another new application is IBM Survey Analytics, which uses text and visual analytics to automatically extract and display more than 1 million pieces of anonymous unstructured data derived from employee surveys.